With the beta now up and running on Steam, feedback and bug reports have been flowing in like never before, to Teddy’s combined delight and despair! In times like these, the ability to quickly roll out patches on Steam really shines. In fact, it’s so easy to update that a better way of delivering patch notes was in order. As such, one of the week’s additions to the game is an in-game patch note viewer!

Whenever the game has updated and there’s new patch notes, a notice will appear on the start menu informing you about this. By pressing Tab, you can access all recorded patch notes.

The game records when you played it last, and if you have missed more than one update, you’ll have an option to aggregate the patches. This will create a combined patch note showing every addition, change and bug fix in all patch notes since the last time you played, allowing you to catch up easily!

Fred has stepped away from the flavor and NPC-crafting (for now) and started working on some new enemies. Below are some of the enemies that will pop up in the upcoming Season Change Temple (working title).

Like the name implies, changing seasons will be the main focus of the Season Change Temple.Player will be able to change season between Fall, Winter and Summer (spring is excluded for a reason!) with each season affecting the dungeon both visually and gameplay wise.

The season change-ability will be the main ingredient of the puzzles of the dungeon, but it will also effect the enemies within it. As seen above, every enemy comes in 3 different versions that each represents a different season. For example, changing the season to Summer will boost the stats of all summer enemies as well as allow them to use certain skills. The same goes for the other seasons!

Just like last week, this week’s post will be pretty short and to the point! To start things off Fred has kept hammering away at flavor and environment animations for the HQ as well as the rest of Evergrind City.
Vilya kept working on the portraits, so here’s another of those ‘step-by-step’ thingies, this time featuring Plott the commentator:

Steam Beta Update:

Teddy has been spending most of his time in the workshop fixing bugs in pursuit of a reasonably stable Steam Release, and as a result, it’s finally ready to be rolled out to all current beta users who’ve left feedback! We’ve already sent messages on IndieDB to everyone who’ve posted a “first impression” over at the IndieDB-forum.

If you have posted bug reports, videos or feedback elsewhere, please contact us through Desura or IndieDB and we’ll give you your Steam key!

This week we’ve mostly done stuff under the hood (Steam, testing and tweaking), but we also mashed in a new system that’s long overdue. Since it’s a system that’s easy to implement and maintain (although mostly because Simon has been slacking off for long enough), we’ve “finally” added the Treasure Map system!

When you buy or find a treasure map (currently, they are all bought from Simon) they will appear under “maps” in your journal. Here you’ll get a hint about the reward. Generic treasure maps are simply numbered, while more important maps can have names! Inspecting a treasure map will take you to a screen that looks something like this:

Disregard the text to the left – it’s drunk!

There are three types of maps. Firstly, there are screenshots of some location in the game that you’ll have to find. These are probably the easiest!

The second kind is what you see above: some kind of sketch hinting a location. These could be pretty straightforward, like the one above, drawn from a different angle than the game itself, or even something completely different.

The third and final version are treasure “maps” written in text! These are small stories or riddles telling you how to find a treasure.

When you stand on the spot where the treasure is buried (take or give 10 pixels), a pulsating X will appear beneath your character! Simply press the action button to dig up your well deserved reward!

One of the best thing about treasure maps is that they are probably the only thing in the entire game which actually takes longer for the player to finish than it takes for us to create… :P

Last week in the comments, there were some confusion regarding the Steam beta transfer, so here are some clarifications:

Who? If you’re in the Desura beta and you have posted a first impression, reported a bug or in some other way provided feedback* when we start inviting people over to Steam, you will get an invite. Also, we’ll invite some more people from the IndieDB registration thread. In both these cases we will send a message on IndieDB asking you if you want a Steam key! You should automatically receive an e-mail when we send that message. You can still post feedback (preferably on the IndieDB private forums if you have access) if you forgot to do it when you got into the beta.

* Making a video where we can watch you play is also a form of feedback

When? We have a small checklist of stuff to fix, but fingers crossed we might invite some of you by the end of the week to test the waters, and the rest next week if the transfer goes smoothly. At that point we might send out a bunch of new invites as well.